Experiences

Participatory Budgeting in Manastur District, Cluj-Napoca

This experience was presented as candidate for the 9th IOPD Award for Best Practices in Citizen Participation in 2015, and was recognized with a special mention by the international jury

Description

Background

Cluj-Napoca is the second
largest city of Romania
and M?n??tur
is the largest district of Cluj-Napoca, with over 100,000 inhabitants. The specific
problems of Manastur districtarisefrom the factthat it has averyhigh populationdensity
(over 4200 inhabitants/km2) with very diverse needs (from children
playgrounds to elderly social assistance, from schools to transportation, from
parking spaces to recreation areas, from reducing pollution to public safety).
For the mostpart, it was builtinthe 1970s and
1980s, whenthe communist
industrialization ofthe citywas
based onthe construction ofdormitory-districts
with high density population.Among these,M?n??tur district has the highest density. Also, after 1990, the restitution of real estate and
the newconstructions inadjacent
areas reduced even more the spaces used by residents as traditional areas for
recreation, raising important issues for thequality of
life and of the public space in Manastur.

The numerous issues regarding the
quality of life in Manastur needed to be prioritized. To make it a fair
process, the City Hall
of Cluj-Napoca
acknowledged that the citizens must have a say in the decisionsthat affect theirlives and invited them to decide what their priorities were at
the moment in improving their quality of life by employing a
participatory governance instrument - the Participatory Budgeting.

It was
the first successful initiative of public management based on collaborative
decision making and public participation in the former communist Romania. The
process started in January 2013 and ended in December 2013, with the inclusion
in the officially approved budget for 2014 of the priorities and projects
proposed by the citizens of the Manastur district. As the projects
implementation spans from a few weeks to a couple of years this can be seen as
an ongoing process, until the implementation is complete. As this pilot PB
initiative has been a success, the City Hall chose to go forward with the PB in
2014-2015, including a new district in the process  Marasti, using a similar
design and methodology. Similarly, a Youth PB project, coordinated by
the City Hall in collaboration with an NGOs federation (SHARE) has been started
in November 2014.

Objectives

Themain goal of the Participatory Budgeting
initiative in Cluj-Napoca
has been to developandstrengthen
participatory local governance by empoweringlocal community, while increasing decisional
transparency and making more sustainable public decisions.

The Participatory Budgeting pilot-process conducted in Cluj-Napoca can be regarded as atypical
especially because there was no
established sum of money pre-allocated from the budget. There were two main
reasons for this:

(i)legal issues
(specific law restrictions and stipulations) - Romanian legislation does not
include any provisions regarding participatory processes, therefore it would
have been highly disputable for the City Hall and City Council to pre-allocate
a sum of money in the City budget for PB, risking to have the project legally
shut down;

(ii)change of
focus (political risks) - even if legal advisors would have found a way to
pre-allocate a certain amount of funds for the PB, the designer of the process
advised the City Hall against this widely used approach because of the risks
associated with it in the specific local socio-political context: the mayor and
the City Hall could have been accused of electoral bribery or of trying to
use public money as a political propaganda tool and, also, the attention focus
could have changed from the problems to be addressed to discussing what would
be the correct amount of money to be pre-allocated.

Secondly, this PB process was based
on the consensus building approach of participatory processes, rather than
the deliberative one. There were two main reasons for this choice:

(i)legal issues
regarding decision-making (according to Romanian legislation public money
spending decisions are ONLY the attribute of public administrators, therefore
citizens voting on how to spend public money could have opened legal issues) 
to avoid the risk of shutting down the process for legal reasons, the process
design had to creatively propose a different alternative for participatory and
inclusive decision making. Even though it consumed more time and resources, the
consensus building approach was chosen, making sure that all possible
stakeholders were invited to the process.

(ii)more
socially inclusive and sustainable decisions  the consensus building approach
allowed for more interaction between citizens and public administration, as
well as it increased the input of minority and marginalized groups whose
previous requests were considered illegitimate by the majority. Within the
consensus building approach, the participants were asked to identify for
themselves the most unmaintained areas as well of the types/groups/categories
of citizens most in need of help within their neighborhoods and to propose
solutions to their problems. Through consensus building everybodys voice was
heard and taken into consideration. It did not matter that some ethnic groups
or socially challenged individuals were in minority or that some people were
living in the district without proper paperwork  everyones input was recorded
as equally important and legitimate when the community priorities were set (e.g.
 increased public transportation facilities, the creation of a cultural and
leisure center with free access for community members, especially low-income
families with kids, free training and job counseling services for the
unemployed, several small playgrounds and parks for young families with
children, several small outdoor sports areas for the teenagers and young people,
increased level of public safety, improvement of sanitation services etc.).

Overall, the focus of participants was on prioritizing problems and
proposing socially inclusive solutions for their community and the PB won the
support of all political parties represented in the City Council.

The designandprocess planning,as well
as the training offacilitatorstookplace fromJanuary to March 2013. The
participatory process took place from March to December 2013, and the results
were reflected in 2014 in the financing of over 57 small projects/ideas, 1 medium project and 3 large public investmentsfor the Manastur PB 
all totalizing budget allocations of over 4.3 million Euros, one of the
largest in Europe in 2014.

Manastur PB has
become a yearly process for the City of Cluj-Napoca
and PB has expanded in 2014 with the new PB for the district of Marasti. Similarly, a
Youth PB project, coordinated by the City Hall in collaboration with an NGOs
federation (SHARE) has been started in November 2014.

Results

Total number of
direct participants: 723

Total number of
indirect participants (represented by leaders of the Home Owners Associations):
11-12,000

Targeted
population: 100,000

Higher number of
direct/indirect participants than expected.

The input received
through the PB process was surprising in many aspects, especially due to the
techniques used, which allowed prioritization of needs, social inclusion and
proposal of solutions based on consensus building.

The significant
number of projects financed  3 large
scale projects (transformation of a
decaying building into the first community center which is designed to offer cultural and leisure opportunities for community members, especially
low-income families with kids, as well as free public services for socially
challenged individuals such as free training and job counselling services for
the unemployed; 2 large infrastructure
repairs/improvement of high traffic, highly populated streets), 1 medium project (improvements and
repairs to the largest park of the district), and57 small projects (9
small parks/recreation areas improved, 4 small outdoor sports areas improved/repaired,
7 playgrounds repaired/improved, public lighting improved/repaired in 4 areas,
street/traffic signs placement/replacement for increasing traffic safety,
increased the number and presence of local police in 5 areas, public green
areas rejuvenated throughout the district, etc.).

The
large amount of money allocated for the resulting PB projects: 4.3 million Euros.